TL/DR: I became a mathematician because I was a socially awkward five-year-old and things just kind of snowballed from there.

The early days

My mathematical career started in kindergarten. Until I was five years old I stayed home with my mom and two younger siblings, even though a free full-day pre-school and kindergarten program was available from age three, and mandatory from age five. My mom had gone to the same pre-school as a child and hated it, so she tried to spare me by keeping me at home as long as possible. This was probably a good decision given that I was a shy, not very sociable child, but it also meant that when I started at age five, all the other kids knew each other already and my chances of fitting in were even lower. My days consisted of “playtime” (raucous bullying), “meal time” (bullying with food), “nap time” (quiet bullying), and circle time. The only part I liked was circle time, because kids had to sit, shut up and listen to the teacher then, and I was one of the few who were capable of doing this.

For the better part of the year I hated kindergarten desperately. I would cling to the fence, where there was less of a chance of some kid pushing me to the ground, and waited for my mom and siblings to come by on their daily walk. To pass the time I entertained myself by trying to compute and re-compute how many minutes I still had to spend there before my parents would pick me up. This was an elaborate task for a five-year-old, and my arithmetic improved quickly with so much practice. My most glorious moment that year was the “counting competition” at circle time one day: each of us had to stand up and count as far as we could, or until we made a mistake. I could count indefinitely at this point, and I got to put my tormentors (aka classmates) through a very long stretch of having to listen to me count in a monotone voice.

School

I am happy to report that my school experience improved steadily from year to year, until finally at age ten I started attending an eight year high school program which I loved. I was a good student and my parents always supported my academic aspirations, and math and science were constant topics of conversation at home.

My parents also provided gentle encouragement: my dad used to tell me that there should be at least one thing I’m really good at, and in everything else an A+ is enough. (It sounded even better then because in my school system an A+ was called a 5*. So it was actually “In one or two subjects you should reach for the stars, in everything else a 5* is enough.”) Contrary to my dad, my mom was a bit of a perfectionist. I remember when I was about 9 years old I entered a math competition and placed 8th or 9th in my district. I was proud, but when I told Mom she explained to me that most kids in my district were probably morons, so 8th place there should be viewed as a failure, not a success. She made it clear that top ten in the country was the lowest bar where I could begin to feel pleased. My mom was a warm and nurturing parent, she was just blunt in her criticism, and one of her parenting goals was to protect me from developing an inflated view of my achievements.

For some kids this kind of parental pressure could have proven disastrous (in fact, one of my siblings suffered significantly), but I responded quite well and rose to the challenge. During my 8-year high school program I was supported by a wonderful teacher who appreciated the creative side of mathematics (i.e., The Only Side, but not every math teacher knows that). I was also surrounded by a group of like-minded friends, and a healthy rivalry developed between us. There is nothing sweeter than beating the guy you have a crush on, and my big high school crush was no easy competition: he grew up to found a company which now makes some of the world’s best two-photon laser scanning microscopes for neuroscience.

Throughout high school I loved math and chemistry most, and I occasionally met my mom’s “low bar” for success, though not every year. At the end of high school I had to choose an undergraduate program, and I hesitated between pure mathematics, chemistry, and high school teaching of math and chemistry. I ruled out research chemistry on my dad’s advice: he himself is a chemical engineer. He warned me about the crippling lack of funding in experimental science, and at the time none of us expected that I would move on to greener pastures. Teaching was harder to say no to: it would have allowed me to keep studying both of my favourite subjects, and for years I had been tutoring for pocket money and found it very rewarding. My mom is also a teacher and she was quite happy in her career at the time. An unexpected influence came from some of her friends (teachers and professors), who expressed the opinion that since one, I was a girl, and two, I hadn’t gone to a specialised math high school, there was little chance that I would make it through the notoriously difficult pure math program. My decision to go for it was motivated partly by the fact that switching to teaching from pure math would be much easier than the opposite, but also by a certain amount of “I’ll show you all” defiance.

University

Those warnings about the pure math program being too difficult were not lost on me, and in my first semester I worked very hard. There were about 60 students starting out in my year, and within a month we split into roughly two social groups: “nerdy” and “even nerdier”. I – somewhat by chance – slotted myself into the even nerdier group, which turned out to be very fortunate for me: almost everyone in the “nerdy” group dropped out or switched programs by the end of the first year, and almost everyone in “even nerdier” ended up graduating. I loved the first two years of the program and did very well (it turns out, even girls can learn math if they try hard enough).

In my third year I had to take a lot of courses that were not very well aligned with where my interests were headed (I loved algebra and topology; my third year was very heavy on analysis, numerical analysis and probability). I struggled in some of my courses and began to feel left behind as my peers started working on original research projects and publications. In North America a third-year undergraduate publishing original articles would be quite unusual, but at my university early research activity was encouraged, and it was almost a requirement for getting into the PhD program. I was a late bloomer compared to that expectation, and I was starting to run low on momentum in the absence of external validation. I was a good little child addicted to praise.

By this point I had started dating a then-graduate student, whom I eventually married (and even more eventually split up with). He was a true rising star. At the time I was taking a course with only one other student, a friend of mine, and for our final grade we had to take an oral exam. At the end of my exam the professor told me “You’re not bad. You’re not as good as [the other student], but you’re doing fine. Also, you are [my boyfriend]’s girlfriend, so I’m sure you’ll make it.” I remember this moment very clearly as it was almost a prophecy for the next decade of my career. This is how I started thinking of myself: not bad, not great, but good enough to make it as Husband’s other half. (I wrote about the caveats of this mindset here.)

Graduate school

Said Husband was getting ready to try his luck at post-doc jobs in the US, so I decided to apply to graduate schools alongside him. This was not so much a career decision as the only reasonable option: in any other case I would have had to move to the US on a spousal visa which would have allowed me to be a housewife and nothing else. Graduate school seemed a much healthier, more interesting plan. By some miracle, one of my two successful applications was in the same city as Husband’s successful job application. (This was not a case of spousal hire but a genuine stroke of luck; they were at different institutions.)

Even though graduate school in the US was good for my soul and my self-esteem, by the time Husband arrived at his tenure-track job after three years and two moves, I was back in my “never going to make it” mind-set. During our first year in Toronto, I considered going back to my old plan of high school teaching, and even researched how that could be done in Ontario. I often complained to Husband about my doubts, and he gave me some of the best advice about graduate school that I’ve ever heard: he told me to just relax and enjoy myself. He pointed out that being a PhD student provided me with great flexibility, a community of interesting, fun people, intellectual stimulation and reasonable financial security for four years. He suggested that I make the most of it, whatever that means to me, and decide on the next step at the end.

I took this advice to heart and it resulted in some of the happiest years of my life. I used the flexibility to get serious about some hobbies: dancing, and later baking. I met some of my best friends through the program. I travelled, taught, performed with a dance group, and yes, eventually I got the hang of research. Husband, should he ever read this, deserves a big shout-out: without you, I would never have become a mathematician. Had you not dragged me to the US and encouraged me through grad school, I would never have done it on my own. I have learned so much from your boundless enthusiasm for and insight into mathematics. Thank you.

The other shout-out goes to my PhD advisor, who was, and still is, a bottomless well of projects. The biggest insight that I learned from him, though, I believe he stumbled upon in frustration. (He may deny everything I say from here on.) Sometime late in my program I had already published a decent paper, but I was having a hard time getting a grip on a second project. My advisor threw idea after idea at me, but nothing seemed to stick. One day he ran out of patience and suggested that we collaborate on a project. Within a week I realised how much I enjoyed this (as opposed to reporting on my progress), and we got two more papers done very quickly. This was the first time I really started believing that I might actually become a mathematician. It was also just in time for job applications.

Jobs

Right after graduate school I had the incredible good fortune of spending a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study, aka math paradise. I had been worried that there would be no-one there in my field, but there was an older post-doc in a research area I was interested in getting into. Very early on I started pestering him with my questions: an uncharacteristically smart career move on my part. He was very patient and generous with his time and I quickly developed a bit of a “mathematical crush” on him. He suggested a problem to me, which we ended up collaborating on and publishing together. I had so much fun with that project, and it opened the door to a new area of mathematics, a new community, and two further jobs.

Late in graduate school and as a post-doc I learned what I most enjoy in mathematics: interaction between different areas, combinatorial ideas applied to topology and algebra, building theories from the bottom up. But just as importantly I learned how I enjoy doing mathematics: by sharing ideas, collaborating, learning from the people around me and teaching them what I know in return, preferably with a slice of cake on the side.

The other day Pink (my spouse) complained to me that even though he is a post-doc he feels like he can do things at the level of a strong undergraduate (he is wrong, of course*). But this is how I often feel as well: nearing the end of my post-doctoral career, I feel like I am now equipped to be a stellar PhD student. I may have just barely started figuring out how to be an ok post-doc and it will be time for the next step before I can master this one. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that I am now a mathematician. This is the story.

*Pink’s comment when he read this: “He is wrong of course. He is middling at best.”

How did you become a mathematician? Or a non-mathematician?